CNRS

The Unité de Neurosciences Intégratives et Computationnelles, directed by Yves Frégnac, at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, is situated in Gif sur Yvette close to Paris. UNIC-CNRS has teaching affiliations with the Ecole des Neurosciences de Paris, Paris Universities VI and XI, and responsibility for courses interfacing physics and biology at the Ecole Polytechnique and the Ecole Supérieure d’Electricité. The research unit was formed in 2000 as a multidisciplinary environment for research in Neuroscience. At present 7 Senior Scientists (Thierry Bal, Alain Destexhe, Yves Frégnac, Kirsty Grant, Daniel Shulz, Andrew Davison and Michelle Rudolph), together with 25 students and technical staff, form 5 workgroups covering the fields of biology, physics and theoretical modelling of neural structures, mathematics and computer science. UNIC-CNRS is currently a partner in the ICT FP6 IP “FACETS” running until mid-2009. Funding also comes from the Human Frontiers in Science Program and 5 projects financed by the French Agence Nationale de la Recherche. Previous EC funding came from ICT-FET FP5 RTD project “SENSEMAKER”, an FP4 International Cooperation project “ELECTROSENSORY SYSTEMS” (coordinator: K.Grant) and 4 Marie Curie fellowships in FP5 and FP6.

The principal contribution of UNIC-CNRS to the ANGELS project will be to use advanced electrophysiology, neuroimaging and neuroanatomy techniques to study i) the representation of complex sensory stimuli as a function of local and global neural activity in the cerebellum-like network of the electrosensory lobe, ii) neural pathways linking mechanisms serving electrolocation and electro-communication, and iii) the complexity of neural integration combining active electrolocation with passive electroreception, and sensory discrimination achieved through perception linked to action. This will provide a biological data base for use in modelling studies and in concepts of computer vision for application in the swimming robot.

Key personnel for UNIC-CNRS

Dr. Kirsty Grant is a Research Director and leader of the “Electrosensory Systems” workgroup. She has 25 years experience in electrophysiology of the electric sense. Before this she obtained a doctorate in motor control (Bristol, UK) and worked on cortico-thalamic gating and sensory integration in the visual and somatosensory systems in Sweden (Univ. Göteborg) and electrosensory systems in the USA (Oregon Health Sciences University-NATO). She has coordinated international cooperation grants with partners IIBCE, UDELAR and UBO-ANSO (FP4 CI1*CT92-0085, MAE ECOS-Sud and PROCOPE). Dr. Grant is the author or co-author of 50 international scientific papers in ISI journals.

References

• http://cns.iaf.cnrs-gif.fr/Main.html

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